Yes that Vale article interested me also. My expectation would be that Hugo would want to welcome a company like Vale into Venezuela and in fact, it is possible he has been "holding" Brisas and Las Cristinas in "cold storage" in order to facilitate a deal like that.

Brisas alone probably wouldn't be big enough for Vale but combined with LC it's a world class project any major would be proud to own.

There has been some discussion on this on the KRY forum here, which I probably instigated.